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111-547: The English word landgrave is the equivalent of the German Landgraf , a compound of the words Land and Graf (German: Count). The title referred originally to a count who possessed imperial immediacy , or a feudal duty owed directly to the Holy Roman Emperor. His jurisdiction stretched over a sometimes quite considerable territory, which was not subservient to an intermediate power, such as

222-539: A duke , a bishop or count palatine . The title originated within the Holy Roman Empire (first recorded in Lower Lotharingia from 1086: Henry III, Count of Louvain , as landgrave of Brabant ). By definition, a landgrave exercised sovereign rights. His decision-making power was comparable to that of a Duke. Landgrave occasionally continued in use as the subsidiary title of such noblemen as

333-541: A macrolanguage consisting of two distinct languages, Twi and Fante , whereas Ethnologue considers Twi and Fante to be dialects of a single language (Akan), since they are mutually intelligible. This anomaly resulted because the ISO 639-2 standard has separate codes for Twi and Fante, which have separate literary traditions, and all 639-2 codes for individual languages are automatically part of 639-3, even though 639-3 would not normally assign them separate codes. In 2014, with

444-553: A mixed language or a creole —a theory called the Middle English creole hypothesis . Although the great influence of these languages on the vocabulary and grammar of Modern English is widely acknowledged, most specialists in language contact do not consider English to be a true mixed language. English is classified as a Germanic language because it shares innovations with other Germanic languages including Dutch , German , and Swedish . These shared innovations show that

555-644: A 2012 official Eurobarometer poll (conducted when the UK was still a member of the EU), 38 percent of the EU respondents outside the countries where English is an official language said they could speak English well enough to have a conversation in that language. The next most commonly mentioned foreign language, French (which is the most widely known foreign language in the UK and Ireland), could be used in conversation by 12 percent of respondents. A working knowledge of English has become

666-424: A 2021 review of Ethnologue and Glottolog, linguist Shobhana Chelliah noted that "For better or worse, the impact of the site is indeed considerable. [...] Clearly, the site has influence on the field of linguistics and beyond." She added that she, among other linguists, integrated Ethnologue in her linguistics classes." The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics uses Ethnologue as its primary source for

777-448: A country. From this edition, Ethnologue includes data about first and second languages of refugees , temporary foreign workers and immigrants. In 2021, the 24th edition had 7,139 modern languages, an increase of 22 living languages from the 23rd edition. Editors especially improved data about language shift in this edition. In 2022, the 25th edition listed a total of 7,151 living languages, an increase of 12 living languages from

888-1068: A cursory description of revitalization efforts where reported, intelligibility and lexical similarity with other dialects and languages, writing scripts, an estimate of language viability using the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (EGIDS), and bibliographic resources. Coverage varies depending on languages. For instance, as of 2008, information on word order was present for 15% of entries while religious affiliations were mentioned for 38% of languages. According to Lyle Campbell "language maps are highly valuable" and most country maps are of high quality and user-friendly. Ethnologue gathers information from SIL's thousands of field linguists , surveys done by linguists and literacy specialists, observations of Bible translators , and crowdsourced contributions. SIL's field linguists use an online collaborative research system to review current data, update it, or request its removal. SIL has

999-658: A distinct language from Modern English and is virtually impossible for 21st-century unstudied English-speakers to understand. Its grammar was similar to that of modern German: nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs had many more inflectional endings and forms , and word order was much freer than in Modern English. Modern English has case forms in pronouns ( he , him , his ) and has a few verb inflections ( speak , speaks , speaking , spoke , spoken ), but Old English had case endings in nouns as well, and verbs had more person and number endings. Its closest relative

1110-490: A foreign language, make up the "expanding circle". The distinctions between English as a first language, as a second language, and as a foreign language are often debatable and may change in particular countries over time. For example, in the Netherlands and some other countries of Europe, knowledge of English as a second language is nearly universal, with over 80 percent of the population able to use it, and thus English

1221-469: A highly valuable catalogue of the world's languages that "has become the standard reference" and whose "usefulness is hard to overestimate". They concluded that Ethnologue was "truly excellent, highly valuable, and the very best book of its sort available." In a review of Ethnologue 's 2009 edition in Ethnopolitics , Richard O. Collin , professor of politics, noted that " Ethnologue has become

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1332-694: A metered paywall to cover its cost, as it is financially self-sustaining. Users in high-income countries who wanted to refer to more than seven pages of data per month had to buy a paid subscription . The 18th edition released that year included a new section on language policy country by country. In 2016, Ethnologue added date about language planning agencies to the 19th edition. As of 2017, Ethnologue 's 20th edition described 237 language families including 86 language isolates and six typological categories, namely sign languages , creoles , pidgins , mixed languages , constructed languages , and as yet unclassified languages . The early focus of

1443-520: A more standard version of English. They have many more speakers of English who acquire English as they grow up through day-to-day use and listening to broadcasting, especially if they attend schools where English is the medium of instruction. Varieties of English learned by non-native speakers born to English-speaking parents may be influenced, especially in their grammar, by the other languages spoken by those learners. Most of those varieties of English include words little used by native speakers of English in

1554-695: A number of other Anglic languages, including Scots and the extinct Fingallian dialect and Yola language of Ireland. Like Icelandic and Faroese , the development of English in the British Isles isolated it from the continental Germanic languages and influences, and it has since diverged considerably. English is not mutually intelligible with any continental Germanic language, as it differs in vocabulary , syntax , and phonology . However, some of these, such as Dutch or Frisian, do show strong affinities with English, especially with its earlier stages. Unlike Icelandic and Faroese, which were isolated,

1665-684: A requirement in a number of occupations and professions such as medicine and computing. English has become so important in scientific publishing that more than 80 percent of all scientific journal articles indexed by Chemical Abstracts in 1998 were written in English, as were 90 percent of all articles in natural science publications by 1996 and 82 percent of articles in humanities publications by 1995. International communities such as international business people may use English as an auxiliary language , with an emphasis on vocabulary suitable for their domain of interest. This has led some scholars to develop

1776-407: A rich inflectional morphology and relatively free word order to a mostly analytic pattern with little inflection and a fairly fixed subject–verb–object word order . Modern English relies more on auxiliary verbs and word order for the expression of complex tenses , aspects and moods , as well as passive constructions , interrogatives , and some negation . The earliest form of English

1887-455: A scientific perspective. He concluded: " Ethnologue is at present still better than any other nonderivative work of the same scope. [It] is an impressively comprehensive catalogue of world languages, and it is far superior to anything else produced prior to 2009. In particular, it is superior by virtue of being explicit." According to Hammarström, as of 2016, Ethnologue and Glottolog are the only global-scale continually maintained inventories of

1998-758: A significant minority speaks English. The countries with the most native English speakers are, in descending order, the United States (at least 231 million), the United Kingdom (60 million), Canada (19 million), Australia (at least 17 million), South Africa (4.8 million), Ireland (4.2 million), and New Zealand (3.7 million). In these countries, children of native speakers learn English from their parents, and local people who speak other languages and new immigrants learn English to communicate in their neighbourhoods and workplaces. The inner-circle countries provide

2109-470: A single language depends upon sociolinguistic evaluation by various scholars; as the preface to Ethnologue states, "Not all scholars share the same set of criteria for what constitutes a 'language' and what features define a ' dialect '." The criteria used by Ethnologue are mutual intelligibility and the existence or absence of a common literature or ethnolinguistic identity. The number of languages identified has been steadily increasing, from 5,445 in

2220-582: A standard resource for scholars in the other social sciences: anthropologists, economists, sociologists and, obviously, sociolinguists". According to Collin, Ethnologue is "stronger in languages spoken by indigenous peoples in economically less-developed portions of the world" and "when recent in-depth country-studies have been conducted, information can be very good; unfortunately [...] data are sometimes old". In 2012, linguist Asya Pereltsvaig described Ethnologue as "a reasonably good source of thorough and reliable geographical and demographic information about

2331-525: A team of editors by geographical area who prepare reports to Ethnologue's general editor. These reports combine opinions from SIL area experts and feedback solicited from non-SIL linguists. Editors have to find compromises when opinions differ. Most of SIL's linguists have taken three to four semesters of graduate linguistics courses, and half of them have a master's degree. They're trained by 300 PhD linguists in SIL. The determination of what characteristics define

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2442-447: A verb ending ( present plural): From the 8th to the 11th centuries, Old English gradually transformed through language contact with Old Norse in some regions. The waves of Norse (Viking) colonisation of northern parts of the British Isles in the 8th and 9th centuries put Old English into intense contact with Old Norse , a North Germanic language. Norse influence was strongest in the north-eastern varieties of Old English spoken in

2553-563: Is Old Frisian , but even some centuries after the Anglo-Saxon migration, Old English retained considerable mutual intelligibility with other Germanic varieties. Even in the 9th and 10th centuries, amidst the Danelaw and other Viking invasions, there is historical evidence that Old Norse and Old English retained considerable mutual intelligibility, although probably the northern dialects of Old English were more similar to Old Norse than

2664-400: Is also the most widely learned second language in the world, with more second-language speakers than native speakers. English is either the official language or one of the official languages in 59 sovereign states (such as India , Ireland , and Canada ). In some other countries, it is the sole or dominant language for historical reasons without being explicitly defined by law (such as in

2775-466: Is also undergoing change under the influence of American English, fuelled by the strong presence of American English in the media and the prestige associated with the United States as a world power. As of 2016 , 400 million people spoke English as their first language , and 1.1 billion spoke it as a secondary language. English is the largest language by number of speakers . English

2886-610: Is also widely used in media and literature, and the number of English language books published annually in India is the third largest in the world after the US and UK. However, English is rarely spoken as a first language, numbering only around a couple hundred-thousand people, and less than 5% of the population speak fluent English in India. David Crystal claimed in 2004 that, combining native and non-native speakers, India now has more people who speak or understand English than any other country in

2997-407: Is an official language of countries populated by few descendants of native speakers of English. It has also become by far the most important language of international communication when people who share no native language meet anywhere in the world. The Indian linguist Braj Kachru distinguished countries where English is spoken with a three circles model . In his model, Kachru based his model on

3108-538: Is called Old English or Anglo-Saxon ( c.  450–1150 ). Old English developed from a set of West Germanic dialects, often grouped as Anglo-Frisian or North Sea Germanic , and originally spoken along the coasts of Frisia , Lower Saxony and southern Jutland by Germanic peoples known to the historical record as the Angles , Saxons , and Jutes . From the 5th century, the Anglo-Saxons settled Britain as

3219-518: Is listed as a language. In addition to choosing a primary name for a language, Ethnologue provides listings of other name(s) for the language and any dialects that are used by its speakers, government, foreigners and neighbors. Also included are any names that have been commonly referenced historically, regardless of whether a name is considered official, politically correct or offensive; this allows more complete historic research to be done. These lists of names are not necessarily complete. Ethnologue

3330-496: Is not ideologically or theologically biased. Ethnologue includes alternative names and autonyms , the number of L1 and L2 speakers, language prestige , domains of use, literacy rates , locations, dialects, language classification , linguistic affiliations , typology , language maps, country maps, publication and use in media, availability of the Bible in each language and dialect described, religious affiliations of speakers,

3441-536: Is often arbitrarily defined as beginning with the conquest of England by William the Conqueror in 1066, but it developed further in the period from 1150 to 1500. With the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the now-Norsified Old English language was subject to another wave of intense contact, this time with Old French , in particular Old Norman French , influencing it as a superstrate. The Norman French spoken by

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3552-424: Is routinely used to communicate with foreigners and often in higher education. In these countries, although English is not used for government business, its widespread use puts them at the boundary between the "outer circle" and "expanding circle". English is unusual among world languages in how many of its users are not native speakers but speakers of English as a second or foreign language. Many users of English in

3663-517: Is spoken by communities on every continent and on islands in all the major oceans. The countries where English is spoken can be grouped into different categories according to how English is used in each country. The "inner circle" countries with many native speakers of English share an international standard of written English and jointly influence speech norms for English around the world. English does not belong to just one country, and it does not belong solely to descendants of English settlers. English

3774-777: Is the third person pronoun group beginning with th- ( they, them, their ) which replaced the Anglo-Saxon pronouns with h- ( hie, him, hera ). Other core Norse loanwords include "give", "get", "sky", "skirt", "egg", and "cake", typically displacing a native Anglo-Saxon equivalent. Old Norse in this era retained considerable mutual intelligibility with some dialects of Old English, particularly northern ones. Englischmen þeyz hy hadde fram þe bygynnyng þre manner speche, Souþeron, Northeron, and Myddel speche in þe myddel of þe lond, ... Noþeles by comyxstion and mellyng, furst wiþ Danes, and afterward wiþ Normans, in menye þe contray longage ys asperyed, and som vseþ strange wlaffyng, chyteryng, harryng, and garryng grisbytting. Although, from

3885-485: The Augustinian canon Orrm , which highlights the blending of both Old English and Anglo-Norman elements in English for the first time. In Wycliff'e Bible of the 1380s, the verse Matthew 8:20 was written: Foxis han dennes, and briddis of heuene han nestis . Here the plural suffix -n on the verb have is still retained, but none of the case endings on the nouns are present. By the 12th century Middle English

3996-546: The Danelaw area around York, which was the centre of Norse colonisation; today these features are still particularly present in Scots and Northern English . The centre of Norsified English was in the Midlands around Lindsey . After 920 CE, when Lindsey was incorporated into the Anglo-Saxon polity, English spread extensively throughout the region. An element of Norse influence that continues in all English varieties today

4107-552: The European Free Trade Association , Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) set English as their organisation's sole working language even though most members are not countries with a majority of native English speakers. While the European Union (EU) allows member states to designate any of the national languages as an official language of

4218-536: The Germanic language branch, and as of 2021 , Ethnologue estimated that there were over 1.5 billion speakers worldwide. Old English emerged from a group of West Germanic dialects spoken by the Anglo-Saxons . Late Old English borrowed some grammar and core vocabulary from Old Norse , a North Germanic language . Then, Middle English borrowed vocabulary extensively from French dialects , which are

4329-767: The Low Saxon and Frisian languages . English is an Indo-European language and belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages . Old English originated from a Germanic tribal and linguistic continuum along the Frisian North Sea coast, whose languages gradually evolved into the Anglic languages in the British Isles , and into the Frisian languages and Low German /Low Saxon on

4440-668: The United Nations at the end of World War II , English had become pre-eminent and is now the main worldwide language of diplomacy and international relations. It is one of six official languages of the United Nations. Many other worldwide international organisations, including the International Olympic Committee , specify English as a working language or official language of the organisation. Many regional international organisations such as

4551-499: The World Bank are eligible for free access and there are discounts for libraries and independent researchers. Subscribers are mostly institutions: 40% of the world's top 50 universities subscribe to Ethnologue , and it is also sold to business intelligence firms and Fortune 500 companies. The introduction of the paywall was harshly criticized by the community of linguists who rely on Ethnologue to do their work and cannot afford

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4662-518: The palatalisation of consonants that were velar consonants in Proto-Germanic (see Phonological history of Old English § Palatalization ). The earliest varieties of an English language, collectively known as Old English or "Anglo-Saxon", evolved from a group of North Sea Germanic dialects brought to Britain in the 5th century. Old English dialects were later influenced by Old Norse -speaking Viking invaders and settlers , starting in

4773-564: The "outer circle" countries are countries such as the Philippines , Jamaica , India , Pakistan , Singapore , Malaysia and Nigeria with a much smaller proportion of native speakers of English but much use of English as a second language for education, government, or domestic business, and its routine use for school instruction and official interactions with the government. Those countries have millions of native speakers of dialect continua ranging from an English-based creole to

4884-425: The 10th edition (in 1984) to 6,909 in the 16th (in 2009), partly due to governments according designation as languages to mutually intelligible varieties and partly due to SIL establishing new Bible translation teams. Ethnologue codes were used as the base to create the new ISO 639-3 international standard. Since 2007, Ethnologue relies only on this standard, administered by SIL International, to determine what

4995-543: The 17th edition, Ethnologue introduced a numerical code for language status using a framework called EGIDS (Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale) , an elaboration of Fishman's GIDS ( Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale ). It ranks a language from 0 for an international language to 10 for an extinct language , i.e. a language with which no-one retains a sense of ethnic identity. In 2015, SIL's funds decreased and in December 2015, Ethnologue launched

5106-490: The 24th edition. This edition specifically improved the use of languages in education . In 2023, the 26th edition listed a total of 7,168 living languages, an increase of 17 living languages from the 25th edition. In 2024, the 27th edition listed a total of 7,164 living languages, a decrease of 4 living languages from the 26th edition. In 1986, William Bright , then editor of the journal Language , wrote of Ethnologue that it "is indispensable for any reference shelf on

5217-617: The 8th and 9th centuries. Middle English began in the late 11th century after the Norman Conquest of England, when a considerable amount of Old French vocabulary was incorporated into English over some three centuries. Early Modern English began in the late 15th century with the start of the Great Vowel Shift and the Renaissance trend of borrowing further Latin and Greek words and roots, concurrent with

5328-608: The Angles. English may have a small amount of substrate influence from Common Brittonic, and a number of possible Brittonicisms in English have been proposed, but whether most of these supposed Brittonicisms are actually a direct result of Brittonic substrate influence is disputed. Old English was divided into four dialects: the Anglian dialects ( Mercian and Northumbrian ) and the Saxon dialects ( Kentish and West Saxon ). Through

5439-524: The British Empire in the 1950s and 1960s, former colonies often did not reject English but rather continued to use it as independent countries setting their own language policies. For example, the view of the English language among many Indians has gone from associating it with colonialism to associating it with economic progress, and English continues to be an official language of India. English

5550-547: The Early Modern period includes the works of William Shakespeare and the translation of the Bible commissioned by King James I . Even after the vowel shift the language still sounded different from Modern English: for example, the consonant clusters /kn ɡn sw/ in knight , gnat , and sword were still pronounced. Many of the grammatical features that a modern reader of Shakespeare might find quaint or archaic represent

5661-655: The English Language , which introduced standard spellings of words and usage norms. In 1828, Noah Webster published the American Dictionary of the English language to try to establish a norm for speaking and writing American English that was independent of the British standard. Within Britain, non-standard or lower class dialect features were increasingly stigmatised, leading to the quick spread of

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5772-557: The English-speaking inner circle countries outside Britain helped level dialect distinctions and produce koineised forms of English in South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. The majority of immigrants to the United States without British ancestry rapidly adopted English after arrival. Now the majority of the United States population are monolingual English speakers. English has ceased to be an "English language" in

5883-524: The Ethnologue was on native use (L1) but was gradually expanded to cover L2 use as well. In 2019, Ethnologue disabled trial views and introduced a hard paywall to cover its nearly $ 1 million in annual operating costs (website maintenance, security, researchers, and SIL's 5,000 field linguists). Subscriptions start at $ 480 per person per year, while full access costs $ 2,400 per person per year. Users in low and middle-income countries as defined by

5994-617: The Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar , who functioned as the Landgrave of Thuringia in the first decade of the 20th century, but the title fell into disuse after World War II . The jurisdiction of a landgrave was a landgraviate (German: Landgrafschaft ), and the wife of a landgrave or a female landgrave was known as a landgravine (from the German Landgräfin , Gräfin being the feminine form of Graf ) The term

6105-554: The Roman economy and administration collapsed . By the 7th century, this Germanic language of the Anglo-Saxons became dominant in Britain , replacing the languages of Roman Britain (43–409): Common Brittonic , a Celtic language , and British Latin , brought to Britain by the Roman occupation. At this time, these dialects generally resisted influence from the then-local Brittonic and Latin languages. England and English (originally Ænglaland and Ænglisc ) are both named after

6216-576: The Summer Institute of Linguistics), a Christian linguistic service organization with an international office in Dallas , Texas. The organization studies numerous minority languages to facilitate language development, and to work with speakers of such language communities in translating portions of the Bible into their languages. Despite the Christian orientation of its publisher, Ethnologue

6327-494: The Union, in practice English is the main working language of EU organisations. Although in most countries English is not an official language, it is currently the language most often taught as a foreign language . In the countries of the EU, English is the most widely spoken foreign language in nineteen of the twenty-five member states where it is not an official language (that is, the countries other than Ireland and Malta ). In

6438-519: The United States and United Kingdom ). It is a co-official language of the United Nations , the European Union , and many other international and regional organisations. It has also become the de facto lingua franca of diplomacy, science , technology, international trade, logistics, tourism, aviation, entertainment, and the Internet . English accounts for at least 70% of total speakers of

6549-471: The World is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensive catalogue of languages. It was first issued in 1951, and is now published by SIL International , an American evangelical Christian non-profit organization . Ethnologue has been published by SIL Global (formerly known as

6660-407: The base from which English spreads to other countries in the world. Estimates of the numbers of second language and foreign-language English speakers vary greatly from 470 million to more than 1 billion, depending on how proficiency is defined. Linguist David Crystal estimates that non-native speakers now outnumber native speakers by a ratio of 3 to 1. In Kachru's three-circles model,

6771-453: The basis for the required controlled natural languages Seaspeak and Airspeak, used as international languages of seafaring and aviation. English used to have parity with French and German in scientific research, but now it dominates that field. It achieved parity with French as a language of diplomacy at the Treaty of Versailles negotiations in 1919. By the time of the foundation of

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6882-400: The beginning, Englishmen had three manners of speaking, southern, northern and midlands speech in the middle of the country, ... Nevertheless, through intermingling and mixing, first with Danes and then with Normans, amongst many the country language has arisen, and some use strange stammering, chattering, snarling, and grating gnashing. John Trevisa , c.  1385 Middle English

6993-638: The consensus of educated English speakers around the world, without any oversight by any government or international organisation. American listeners readily understand most British broadcasting, and British listeners readily understand most American broadcasting. Most English speakers around the world can understand radio programmes, television programmes, and films from many parts of the English-speaking world. Both standard and non-standard varieties of English can include both formal or informal styles, distinguished by word choice and syntax and use both technical and non-technical registers. The settlement history of

7104-701: The continent. The Frisian languages, which together with the Anglic languages form the Anglo-Frisian languages , are the closest living relatives of English. Low German/Low Saxon is also closely related, and sometimes English, the Frisian languages, and Low German are grouped together as the North Sea Germanic languages, though this grouping remains debated. Old English evolved into Middle English , which in turn evolved into Modern English. Particular dialects of Old and Middle English also developed into

7215-475: The date when last fluent speaker of the language died, standardized the age range of language users, and improved the EGIDS estimates. In 2020, the 23rd edition listed 7,117 living languages, an increase of 6 living languages from the 22nd edition. In this edition, Ethnologue expanded its coverage of immigrant languages : previous editions only had full entries for languages considered to be "established" within

7326-476: The development of English was influenced by a long series of invasions of the British Isles by other peoples and languages, particularly Old Norse and French dialects . These left a profound mark of their own on the language, so that English shows some similarities in vocabulary and grammar with many languages outside its linguistic clades —but it is not mutually intelligible with any of those languages either. Some scholars have argued that English can be considered

7437-476: The distinct characteristics of Early Modern English. In the 1611 King James Version of the Bible, written in Early Modern English, Matthew 8:20 says, "The Foxes haue holes and the birds of the ayre haue nests." This exemplifies the loss of case and its effects on sentence structure (replacement with subject–verb–object word order, and the use of of instead of the non-possessive genitive), and

7548-401: The early period of Old English were written using a runic script . By the 6th century, a Latin alphabet was adopted, written with half-uncial letterforms . It included the runic letters wynn ⟨ ƿ ⟩ and thorn ⟨ þ ⟩ , and the modified Latin letters eth ⟨ ð ⟩ , and ash ⟨ æ ⟩ . Old English is essentially

7659-551: The educational reforms of King Alfred in the 9th century and the influence of the kingdom of Wessex , the West Saxon dialect became the standard written variety . The epic poem Beowulf is written in West Saxon, and the earliest English poem, Cædmon's Hymn , is written in Northumbrian. Modern English developed mainly from Mercian, but the Scots language developed from Northumbrian. A few short inscriptions from

7770-695: The elite in England eventually developed into the Anglo-Norman language . Because Norman was spoken primarily by the elites and nobles, while the lower classes continued speaking English, the main influence of Norman was the introduction of a wide range of loanwords related to politics, legislation and prestigious social domains. Middle English also greatly simplified the inflectional system, probably in order to reconcile Old Norse and Old English, which were inflectionally different but morphologically similar. The distinction between nominative and accusative cases

7881-408: The expanding circle use it to communicate with other people from the expanding circle, so that interaction with native speakers of English plays no part in their decision to use the language. Non-native varieties of English are widely used for international communication, and speakers of one such variety often encounter features of other varieties. Very often today a conversation in English anywhere in

7992-721: The growing economic and cultural influence of the United States and its status as a superpower following the Second World War has, along with worldwide broadcasting in English by the BBC and other broadcasters, caused the language to spread across the planet much faster. In the 21st century, English is more widely spoken and written than any language has ever been. As Modern English developed, explicit norms for standard usage were published, and spread through official media such as public education and state-sponsored publications. In 1755, Samuel Johnson published his A Dictionary of

8103-479: The history of English was Early Modern English (1500–1700). Early Modern English was characterised by the Great Vowel Shift (1350–1700), inflectional simplification, and linguistic standardisation. The Great Vowel Shift affected the stressed long vowels of Middle English. It was a chain shift , meaning that each shift triggered a subsequent shift in the vowel system. Mid and open vowels were raised , and close vowels were broken into diphthongs . For example,

8214-407: The history of how English spread in different countries, how users acquire English, and the range of uses English has in each country. The three circles change membership over time. Countries with large communities of native speakers of English (the inner circle) include Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand, where the majority speaks English, and South Africa, where

8325-403: The inner-circle countries, and they may show grammatical and phonological differences from inner-circle varieties as well. The standard English of the inner-circle countries is often taken as a norm for use of English in the outer-circle countries. In the three-circles model, countries such as Poland, China, Brazil, Germany, Japan, Indonesia, Egypt, and other countries where English is taught as

8436-531: The introduction of loanwords from French ( ayre ) and word replacements ( bird originally meaning "nestling" had replaced OE fugol ). By the late 18th century, the British Empire had spread English through its colonies and geopolitical dominance. Commerce, science and technology, diplomacy, art, and formal education all contributed to English becoming the first truly global language. English also facilitated worldwide international communication. English

8547-475: The introduction of the printing press to London. This era notably culminated in the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare . The printing press greatly standardised English spelling, which has remained largely unchanged since then, despite a wide variety of later sound shifts in English dialects. Modern English has spread around the world since the 17th century as a consequence of

8658-489: The island of Great Britain . The namesake of the language is the Angles , one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to Britain . It is the most spoken language in the world, primarily due to the global influences of the former British Empire (succeeded by the Commonwealth of Nations ) and the United States . English is the third-most spoken native language , after Standard Chinese and Spanish ; it

8769-712: The lack of references, Ethnologue added in 2013 a link on each language to language resources from the Open Language Archives Community (OLAC) Ethnologue acknowledges that it rarely quotes any source verbatim but cites sources wherever specific statements are directly attributed to them, and corrects missing attributions upon notification. The website provides a list of all of the references cited. In her 2021 review, Shobhana Chelliah noted that Glottolog aims to be better than Ethnologue in language classification and genetic and areal relationships by using linguists' original sources. Starting with

8880-431: The languages have descended from a single common ancestor called Proto-Germanic . Some shared features of Germanic languages include the division of verbs into strong and weak classes, the use of modal verbs , and the sound changes affecting Proto-Indo-European consonants, known as Grimm's and Verner's laws . English is classified as an Anglo-Frisian language because Frisian and English share other features, such as

8991-414: The languages of the world". The 2003 International Encyclopedia of Linguistics described Ethnologue as "a comprehensive listing of the world's languages, with genetic classification", and follows Ethnologue's classification. In 2005, linguists Lindsay J. Whaley and Lenore Grenoble considered that Ethnologue "continues to provide the most comprehensive and reliable count of numbers of speakers of

9102-870: The level of endangerment in languages around the world." The US National Science Foundation uses Ethnologue to determine which languages are endangered. According to Hammarström et al., Ethnologue is, as of 2022, one of the three global databases documenting language endangerment with the Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger and the Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat). The University of Hawaii Kaipuleohone language archive uses Ethnologue 's metadata as well. The World Atlas of Language Structures uses Ethnologue 's genealogical classification. The Rosetta Project uses Ethnologue 's language metadata. In 2005, linguist Harald Hammarström wrote that Ethnologue

9213-488: The list of languages and language maps. According to linguist Suzanne Romaine , Ethnologue is also the leading source for research on language diversity . According to The Oxford Handbook of Language and Society , Ethnologue is "the standard reference source for the listing and enumeration of Endangered Languages, and for all known and "living" languages of the world"." Similarly, linguist David Bradley describes Ethnologue as "the most comprehensive effort to document

9324-649: The only comprehensive sources of information about language populations and that Ethnologue had more specific information. They concluded that: "the language statistics available today in the form of the Ethnologue population counts are already good enough to be useful" According to linguist William Poser , Ethnologue was, as of 2006, the "best single source of information" on language classification. In 2008 linguists Lyle Campbell and Verónica Grondona highly commended Ethnologue in Language . They described it as

9435-426: The prestige varieties among the middle classes. In modern English, the loss of grammatical case is almost complete (it is now only found in pronouns, such as he and him , she and her , who and whom ), and SVO word order is mostly fixed. Some changes, such as the use of do-support , have become universalised. (Earlier English did not use the word "do" as a general auxiliary as Modern English does; at first it

9546-678: The reign of Henry V . Around 1430, the Court of Chancery in Westminster began using English in its official documents , and a new standard form of Middle English, known as Chancery Standard , developed from the dialects of London and the East Midlands . In 1476, William Caxton introduced the printing press to England and began publishing the first printed books in London, expanding the influence of this form of English. Literature from

9657-515: The scope of other existing standards, e.g. ISO 639-1 and ISO 639-2 . The 14th edition, published in 2000, included 7,148 language codes. In 2002, Ethnologue was asked to work with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to integrate its codes into a draft international standard. Ethnologue codes have then been adopted by ISO as the international standard, ISO 639-3 . The 15th edition of Ethnologue

9768-468: The sense of belonging only to people who are ethnically English . Use of English is growing country-by-country internally and for international communication. Most people learn English for practical rather than ideological reasons. Many speakers of English in Africa have become part of an "Afro-Saxon" language community that unites Africans from different countries. As decolonisation proceeded throughout

9879-483: The source of approximately 28% of Modern English words , and from Latin , which is the source of an additional 28% . As such, though most of its total vocabulary comes from Romance languages , Modern English's grammar, phonology, and most commonly used words in everyday use keep it genealogically classified under the Germanic branch. It exists on a dialect continuum with Scots and is then most closely related to

9990-474: The southern dialects. Theoretically, as late as the 900s AD, a commoner from certain (northern) parts of England could hold a conversation with a commoner from certain parts of Scandinavia. Research continues into the details of the myriad tribes in peoples in England and Scandinavia and the mutual contacts between them. The translation of Matthew 8:20 from 1000 shows examples of case endings ( nominative plural, accusative plural, genitive singular) and

10101-455: The study of English as an auxiliary language. The trademarked Globish uses a relatively small subset of English vocabulary (about 1500 words, designed to represent the highest use in international business English) in combination with the standard English grammar. Other examples include Simple English . The increased use of the English language globally has had an effect on other languages, leading to some English words being assimilated into

10212-493: The subscription The same year, Ethnologue launched its contributor program to fill gaps and improve accuracy, allowing contributors to submit corrections and additions and to get a complimentary access to the website. Ethnologue 's editors gradually review crowdsourced contributions before publication. As 2019 was the International Year of Indigenous Languages , this edition focused on language loss : it added

10323-442: The vocabularies of other languages. This influence of English has led to concerns about language death , and to claims of linguistic imperialism , and has provoked resistance to the spread of English; however the number of speakers continues to increase because many people around the world think that English provides them with opportunities for better employment and improved lives. Ethnologue Ethnologue: Languages of

10434-473: The word bite was originally pronounced as the word beet is today, and the second vowel in the word about was pronounced as the word boot is today. The Great Vowel Shift explains many irregularities in spelling since English retains many spellings from Middle English, and it also explains why English vowel letters have very different pronunciations from the same letters in other languages. English began to rise in prestige, relative to Norman French, during

10545-785: The world may include no native speakers of English at all, even while including speakers from several different countries. This is particularly true of the shared vocabulary of mathematics and the sciences. English is a pluricentric language , which means that no one national authority sets the standard for use of the language. Spoken English, including English used in broadcasting, generally follows national pronunciation standards that are established by custom rather than by regulation. International broadcasters are usually identifiable as coming from one country rather than another through their accents , but newsreader scripts are also composed largely in international standard written English . The norms of standard written English are maintained purely by

10656-544: The world's languages", still they recognize that "individual language surveys may have far more accurate counts for a specific language, but The Ethnologue is unique in bringing together speaker statistics on a global scale". In 2006, computational linguists John C. Paolillo and Anupam Das conducted a systematic evaluation of available information on language populations for the UNESCO Institute for Statistics . They reported that Ethnologue and Linguasphere were

10767-556: The world's languages". She added in 2021 that its maps "are generally fairly accurate although they often depict the linguistic situation as it once was or as someone might imagine it to be but not as it actually is". Linguist George Tucker Childs wrote in 2012 that: " Ethnologue is the most widely referenced source for information on languages of the world", but he added that regarding African languages, "when evaluated against recent field experience [Ethnologue] seems at least out of date". In 2014, Ethnologue admitted that some of its data

10878-656: The world's languages. The main difference is that Ethnologue includes additional information (such as speaker numbers or vitality) but lacks systematic sources for the information given. In contrast, Glottolog provides no language context information but points to primary sources for further data. Contrary to Ethnologue , Glottolog does not run its own surveys, but it uses Ethnologue as one of its primary sources. As of 2019, Hammarström uses Ethnologue in his articles, noting that it "has (unsourced, but) detailed information associated with each speech variety, such as speaker numbers and map location". In response to feedback about

10989-539: The world, but the number of English speakers in India is uncertain, with most scholars concluding that the United States still has more speakers of English than India. Modern English, sometimes described as the first global lingua franca , is also regarded as the first world language . English is the world's most widely used language in newspaper publishing, book publishing, international telecommunications, scientific publishing, international trade, mass entertainment, and diplomacy. English is, by international treaty,

11100-438: The worldwide influence of the British Empire and the United States. Through all types of printed and electronic media in these countries, English has become the leading language of international discourse and the lingua franca in many regions and professional contexts such as science, navigation , and law. Its modern grammar is the result of a gradual change from a dependent-marking pattern typical of Indo-European with

11211-635: Was "the best source that list the non-endangered languages of the world". Lyle Campbell and Russell Barlow also noted that the 2017 edition of Ethnologue "improved [its] classification markedly". They note that Ethnologue 's genealogy is similar to that of the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) but different from that of the Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat) and Glottolog. Linguist Lisa Matthewson commented in 2020 that Ethnologue offers "accurate information about speaker numbers". In

11322-405: Was adopted in parts of North America, parts of Africa, Oceania, and many other regions. When they obtained political independence, some of the newly independent states that had multiple indigenous languages opted to continue using English as the official language to avoid the political and other difficulties inherent in promoting any one indigenous language above the others. In the 20th century

11433-685: Was also used in the Carolinas (what is now North and South Carolina in the United States) during British rule. A "landgrave" was "a county nobleman in the British, privately held North American colony Carolina, ranking just below the proprietary (chartered equivalent of a royal vassal)." Examples include: English language English is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family , whose speakers, called Anglophones , originated in early medieval England on

11544-432: Was consistent with specialist views most of the time and was a catalog "of very high absolute value and by far the best of its kind". In 2011, Hammarström created Glottolog in response to the lack of a comprehensive language bibliography, especially in Ethnologue . In 2015, Hammarström reviewed the 16th, 17th, and 18th editions of Ethnologue and described the frequent lack of citations as its only "serious fault" from

11655-645: Was created in 1971 at the University of Oklahoma under a grant from the National Science Foundation . In 1974 the database was moved to Cornell University . Since 2000, the database has been maintained by SIL International in their Dallas headquarters. In 1997 (13th edition), the website became the primary means of access. In 1984, Ethnologue released a three-letter coding system, called an 'SIL code', to identify each language that it described. This set of codes significantly exceeded

11766-422: Was founded in 1951 by Richard S. Pittman and was initially focused on minority languages, to share information on Bible translation needs. The first edition included information on 46 languages. Hand-drawn maps were introduced in the fourth edition (1953). The seventh edition (1969) listed 4,493 languages. In 1971, Ethnologue expanded its coverage to all known languages of the world. Ethnologue database

11877-518: Was fully developed, integrating both Norse and French features; it continued to be spoken until the transition to early Modern English around 1500. Middle English literature includes Geoffrey Chaucer 's The Canterbury Tales , and Thomas Malory 's Le Morte d'Arthur . In the Middle English period, the use of regional dialects in writing proliferated, and dialect traits were even used for effect by authors such as Chaucer. The next period in

11988-505: Was lost except in personal pronouns, the instrumental case was dropped, and the use of the genitive case was limited to indicating possession . The inflectional system regularised many irregular inflectional forms, and gradually simplified the system of agreement, making word order less flexible. The transition from Old to Middle English can be placed during the writing of the Ormulum . The oldest Middle English texts that were written by

12099-533: Was only used in question constructions, and even then was not obligatory. Now, do-support with the verb have is becoming increasingly standardised.) The use of progressive forms in -ing , appears to be spreading to new constructions, and forms such as had been being built are becoming more common. Regularisation of irregular forms also slowly continues (e.g. dreamed instead of dreamt ), and analytical alternatives to inflectional forms are becoming more common (e.g. more polite instead of politer ). British English

12210-672: Was out-of-date and switched from a four-year publication cycle (in print and online) to yearly online updates. In 2017, Robert Phillipson and Tove Skutnabb-Kangas described Ethnologue as "the most comprehensive global source list for (mostly oral) languages". According to the 2018 Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics , Ethnologue is a "comprehensive, frequently updated [database] on languages and language families'. According to quantitative linguists Simon Greenhill , Ethnologue offers, as of 2018, "sufficiently accurate reflections of speaker population size". Linguists Lyle Campbell and Kenneth Lee Rehg wrote in 2018 that Ethnologue

12321-442: Was the first edition to use this standard. This standard is now administered separately from Ethnologue. SIL International is the registration authority for languages names and codes, according to rules established by ISO. Since then Ethnologue relies on the standard to determine what is listed as a language. In only one case, Ethnologue and the ISO standards treat languages slightly differently. ISO 639-3 considers Akan to be

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